Just two weeks now after Easter Sunday and we’re still very much sharpening our focus on the “initial” impact of these first post resurrection days on the lives of Jesus’ Apostles and his friends. What a head-wrecker it must have been for them in terms of trying to get their heads around it, if that’s what they tried to do! They knew him to be dead – yet they see him alive! they knew he was buried – yet they know him to be back! – they knew he was no longer there – then He was! He would appear – then disappear – then reappear again! All we can do is wonder how they must have coped with all of that.
In fact all any of us can do really is wonder ourselves – full stop! To wonder is to begin to pray: to pray is to attune oneself to truth and to attune ourselves to truth – well it doesn’t come any more real or any better than that does it.?
If real life isn’t touched in a way that is real for those of us who claim to believe in the Christ of God, then you really do have to ask the question – what’s’ the point.?
It’s with that and The Year of Faith in mind, as well as linking it with the National thinking of “the Gathering” in Ireland in 2013 – that the Parish Pastoral Council have focused on June 16th this year as a date for us here in St.Brigid’s to “be” something different to mark this year of Faith. June 16th is Fathers’ Day – a day when the enormous debt we owe to ‘parents’ on so many fronts, is highlighted again, as it was earlier this year on Mothers’ Day (Mar. 10th) as well.
We will flesh out more detail in the next week or two, but basically we were thinking along the following lines;
As lots of people will be thinking of coming back to their “Fathers House” on that day – could we extend that thinking a bit further!?
Just as none of us have to wait a formal invitation to visit “home” there’s a permanent welcome for us there – so too “Our Fathers House” in terms of “Church”, should instill the same confidence in terms of a welcome at any time.
As the present St Brigid’s 3 “Fathers”!! (Sounds a bit like the three Tenors!) Myself, Conor and Tom (representing the many other “Fathers” who went before us), thought we could mark June 16th as a Fathers’ Day with a difference!!
What would you think of, let’s say, if we were to extend a welcome back/home for the 4.30pm Mass that day! A gathering, if you like, with a difference as well – thinking of those who celebrated their wedding here, those who were baptized or had their own children baptized here, or any ceremony or memory really of St Brigid’s that links them fondly to this very special Church. We could renew promises, review commitments, rethink practices, revive visions and generally just gather together. If home is where the heart is – connecting with our roots can only enhance that truth if we do so in the company of others.